Jane R. Flanagan

Jane Flanagan is the Acting Director of the Illinois Department of Labor. She was appointed to lead the State’s primary labor enforcement agency by Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker in February 2022.

Prior to her appointment, Jane was a Deputy General Counsel and Deputy Chief Compliance Officer in the Office of Illinois Governor, where she supervised legal and regulatory matters across a portfolio of state agencies with a focus on labor standards enforcement, workforce training, and work-related safety net programs.

Jane is the founder and former Chief of the Workplace Rights Bureau in the Office of the Illinois Attorney General. Under her leadership, that Office drew national attention to the widespread use of non-compete agreements for low-wage workers, negotiated four federal consent decrees involving labor trafficking in the restaurant industry, and led multiple state level legislative changes.   

In 2019 Jane was an Open Society Foundations Leadership in Government Fellow and a Visiting Scholar at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. While on her fellowship, Jane wrote extensively about the role of government in labor law enforcement, as well as on contractual restraints on labor market mobility.

Jane began her career at Brown, Goldstein, & Levy, where she represented workers in Fair Labor Standards Act cases, as well as civil rights and contract matters. She also previously served as counsel to Maryland’s Commissioner of Labor and Industry.